David Bierk

David Charles Bierk RCA (June 9, 1944 – August 28, 2002) was a Canadian American realist painter known for working in the postmodern genre.[1]

David Bierk
Born
David Charles Bierk

(1944-06-09)June 9, 1944
Appleton, Wisconsin, U.S.
DiedAugust 28, 2002(2002-08-28) (aged 58)
Peterborough, Ontario, Canada
NationalityCanadian/American (United States)
EducationCalifornia College of Arts & Crafts; Humboldt State University
Known forPainting, drawing

Early life

Childhood

Born in Appleton, Wisconsin to Glennon Bierk, and Doris Ruth Steenson;[2] following his parents divorce Bierk moved with his mother to Lafayette, California.[3]

Bierk said of his childhood, "We were plunked into an upper middle class neighbourhood before divorce was common, and she [my mother] not only provided for me but also was my mother, father, teacher and friend. It was my uncle Spiros, though, who taught me - at an early age - what you might call the work ethic. I always worked, at least from the time I was in grade six or seven. Spiros owned a mayonnaise factory in San Francisco and I started working there, doing things like scraping the labels of returned mayonnaise bottles and scraping the mold from cheese - eight hour days in the summers from the time I was 12 or 13."[3]

Early adulthood and education

Bierk graduated from high school in 1962 and joined the National Guard.[3][1] Initially he studied at California College of Arts & Crafts,[4][5] Bierk dropped out after a year and half, and as he described it, "...I took off, hitchhiked across the country, ended up in Florida, and then caught a boat to the Bahamas....I got a job as librarian at...Mary Star of the Sea School, a Catholic grammar school, where I persuaded Sister Mary Alice to let me teach art as well."[3]

Upon his return to California, Bierk was admitted to Humboldt State University where he earned a bachelor of arts 1969, and a master of fine arts in 1970.[6][7][1]

Bierk's sister-in-law lived in Toronto, Canada, and in 1971 he immigrated there with his young family.[8]

Career

Immigration and teaching

During the year that he lived in Toronto, Bierk immersed himself in the local cultural scene, which he described, "...I familiarized myself with the gallery scene...which struck me as vibrant, pioneering, and exploratory."[3] Bierk migrated to Peterborough, Ontario in 1972 to take up a teaching position at Kenner Collegiate Vocational Institute, and later at Fleming College.[3]

Artspace founding

Along with poet, Dennis Tourbin, Bierk founded and directed Artspace between 1974 and 1987, which was one of Canada's earliest artist operated art centers.[9][10][1]

Critical reception and analysis

In a June 2001 Art in America review, critic Jonathan Goodman wrote, "Bierk quotes from the past not so much to critique current art as to reinterpret a way of seeing that he associates with artists as disparate as Vermeer, Eakins, Ingres, Manet and Fantin-Latour....[Bierk] accomplishes this particularly well when he starkly juxtaposes two or three of his eclectic art-historical references within a single work." Noting the work's "virtuoso" technical quality, Goodman also observes that Bierk's "marvelously romantic" landscape paintings are, unlike these referential paintings, invented images, rather than appropriated or copied from masterworks.[11] Both Goodman's review and Bierk's 2002 New York Times obituary note that Bierk used framing to call attention, in a way that is pointedly "postmodern", to the historical disjunction between the evoked masterworks and the contemporary cultural environment: "He painted copies of works by artists like Vermeer or the Hudson River School painter Frederic Edwin Church, for example, and framed them within broad steel panels, setting up a tension between humanism and old masterly craft on the one hand, and Modernist abstraction and industrial fabrication on the other."[1]

Public collections

Awards
  • 1991 Best Album Cover of the Year, RAW Magazine
  • 1980-81 Ontario Association of Art Galleries Poster Design, First Prize
  • 1980 Ontario Association of Art Galleries Catalogue Design, First Prize
  • 1979-80 Ontario Association of Art Galleries, Best Overall Gallery Image, First Prize
  • 1979 Ontario Association of Art Galleries, Newsletter Design, First Prize
  • Canada Council Artist-in-Residence, North Bay, Ontario
  • Royal Canadian Academy of Arts[15]

Personal life and death

Marriages and children

Bierk became Canadian citizen in 1978.[16] Bierk married Kathleen Mae Hunter in Freeport, Bahamas in 1967.[17] Following his divorce from Hunter, Bierk married Elizabeth Lovett Aimers at Abercorn, Quebec in 1980.[18][1] Bierk had eight children, Sebastian Bach, the former lead singer for the rock group Skid Row; Zac Bierk, a Canadian ice hockey player; Heather Dylan, a Canadian actress; Lisa Hare; Alexander Bierk; Jeffrey Bierk; Nicholas Bierk; and Charles Bierk.[1]

Death

Bierk died in Peterborough, Ontario in August 2002, aged 57, from pneumonia related to ongoing leukemia.[1]

Notable works
Queen Elizabeth II portrait hanging inside the (pre-renovation) Peterborough Memorial Centre
  • Hockey Night in Canada (1975)[19]
  • The Laundromat, A Canadian Interior (1975)[19]
  • The Cremation of Sam McGee (Canada Post stamp, 1976)[20]
  • Locally one of his most famous paintings is his iconic, larger than life portrait of Queen Elizabeth II that overlooks the Peterborough Memorial Centre arena. Completed in 1981 and measuring 3.6m x 2.4m (12' x 8') is believed to be the largest portrait of the Queen in North America.[21]
  • Internationally his most widely recognizable work is the 1991 album cover of Skid Row's Slave to the Grind.

References
  1. "David Bierk, 58, Canadian Artist Who Reinterpreted Masterworks". The New York Times. 2002-09-07.
  2. "David Bierk genealogy". Geni.com.
  3. Canadian Art Database
  4. Young, Christopher R.; Arts, Flint Institute of (March 1, 1993). "The purloined image: Flint Institute of Arts, March 28-May 9, 1993". Flint Institute of Arts – via Google Books.
  5. Bierk, David (1974). "Artistes Canadiens: Expositions". books.google.ca. Roundstone Council for the Arts, 1974. Retrieved 2020-08-24.
  6. Young, Christopher R.; Arts, Flint Institute of (March 1, 1993). "The purloined image: Flint Institute of Arts, March 28-May 9, 1993". Flint Institute of Arts – via Google Books.
  7. Bierk, David; Kingwell, Mark; Bellefeuille, Galerie de (March 8, 2006). "David Bierk, 2006". Galerie de Bellefeuille – via Google Books.
  8. Gillis, Carla (September 28, 2011). "Bach in business". NOW Magazine.
  9. "A look back at Peterborough's Artspace in the 1970s". kawarthaNOW. July 25, 2018.
  10. "David Bierk, Bio". CCCA Canadian Art Database. Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art. Retrieved February 28, 2020.
  11. Jonathan Goodman, Art in America, June 2001
  12. "Works – David Bierk – People – eMuseum". aggv.ca.
  13. https://rmg.on.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Press-land-sea-air.pdf
  14. "David Bierk". www.gallery.ca.
  15. "Members since 1880". Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. Archived from the original on 26 May 2011. Retrieved 11 September 2013.
  16. Young, Christopher R.; Arts, Flint Institute of (March 1, 1993). "The purloined image: Flint Institute of Arts, March 28-May 9, 1993". Flint Institute of Arts – via Google Books.
  17. "David Charles Bierk and Kathleen Mae Hunter wedding". The Windsor Star. 1967-11-28.
  18. "David Charles Bierk and Elizabeth Lovett marriage announcement; part 1". The Gazette. 1980-05-28.
  19. "Work Detail".
  20. "Robert W. Service, Sam McGee - Canada Postage Stamp". Archived from the original on 2019-07-22. Retrieved 2019-07-22.
  21. "Report: The Fair-Bierk Building 383 George Street North" (PDF). City of Peterborugh Peterborough Architectural Conservation Advisory Committee. January 2004. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2019-07-01. Retrieved 2019-07-22.
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